Computer Question

[Ronald Blue]

So I didn't expect to be posting this here but here I am. I had a brainstorm and thought I had a solution to it. Maybe I still do. I was planning to pick up a second computer to do the programming for the CNC Router on. Then it occurred to me that why not use my old laptop? So to give a little background info the CNC computer is a desktop with WinCNC on it and also VCarve Pro. IT has a USB hard drive it runs off of. So I thought I would remove the hard drive from the laptop and run off the extenal USB hard drive. It seemed like a good idea. However with the laptop hard drive removed and the external hd plugged in it won't recognize it. I go into the bios and deselect everything but the USB ports. Nothing! However it's not just the old laptop. My current laptop doesn't see it either. I can go into file explorer where you normally will show every type of storage including removable storage and it's not visible. Why? It works fine on the desktop that is attached to the CNC. So I know the hard drive isn't the problem. I can plug it into any of the USB ports on the desktop and it automatically accesses it. I don't even get a power light when plugged into either of the laptops. I'm puzzled to say the least.

[Jerome Stanek]

You will have to have a bootable hard drive in the laptop of boot off a CD or USB if the bios will let you

[Ronald Blue]

As far as I know it is bootable. However I will check that this afternoon when I get off work I believe the desktop runs off the external but I will verify that.

[Matt Schrum]

I won't profess to be a computer expert, but I would be surprised if you can boot from a USB hard drive. I'd imagine that the BIOS is looking for a hard drive connected to the motherboard during bootup. You can definitely have multiple hard drives connected and tell it which to boot from, but when I've cloned hard drives or refreshed old PC's, I don't recall the BIOS having any options to select a USB hard drive as the main hard drive to boot from.

That being said, buy a compatible solid state drive (SSD) for cheap and just avoid this whole problem altogether. Kingston (decent brand) has a 120GB for under $25 on Amazon-- and there are a hundred other options as well. I upgraded my under powered PC (that lives in my shop just to run my CNC) from a normal hard drive to a solid state and it made a huge difference. Boot up times are at least 3 times faster. It doesn't seem to bog down when opening my start up programs and even Chrome runs faster when browsing the web. I had the SSD lying around for months from another PC and I'm kicking myself I didn't install the SSD sooner on my CNC computer.

[Jim Becker]

Using a USB hard drive as a boot device is going to be like riding a snail in the Kentucky Derby...the data transfer rate is far, far slower than the type of connections used internally in the computer. This speed disadvantage is compounded because most operating systems (Windows in this case) are constantly accessing the primary drive for various reasons. IE....I don't believe what you propose to be a good idea even if you can get it to work physically.

[Ronald Blue]

I was clearly mistaken. The USB external hard drive is definitely not what the desktop boots up off of. I haven't spent any time looking yet but believe it to be supplemental removable storage only. So I will look at other options. Thanks for the thoughts and setting me straight.

[Brian Tymchak]

I'm confused at what you are trying to accomplish with switching drives, etc. Why not just load the software you need on to the laptop you want to use? If you need shared access to files between computers, Windows will allow acess across a network, assuming you have these machines networked.

[Jerome Stanek]

I'm confused at what you are trying to accomplish with switching drives, etc. Why not just load the software you need on to the laptop you want to use? If you need shared access to files between computers, Windows will allow acess across a network, assuming you have these machines networked.

Our you could use creeper netork. USB thumb drive and walk it over to the other computer

[Kev Williams]

From my experience: I now have 3 laptops, an HP pavillion that came with Vista, 32 bit, I have a straight from China HASEE that came with my first Fiber Laser, it's running Win7 Ultimate, 32bit, and my recent freebie laptop, which wasn't worth the price, a 4-year-ish old HP laptop that came with win8 and has since been upgraded to Win10. "Upgraded" is a complete laugh. The 3 slowest computers I've EVER experienced in my life are these 3 laptops, and the newest one can't even keep up with the old Vista. The ONLY reason the Win10 isn't in the trash is because TurboTax won't work on 7 this year, and my Win8 computer blew its brains out at about 3 years old. Thankfully...

I have 3 old XP desktops, 1 with a hyperthreaded single-core processor and 750 megs of ram that will run circles around ANY of my laptops. I don't know why they're so slow, they just are.

My suggestion, get a desktop...

[Tom Stenzel]

Just to throw more mud into this when I tried to boot Linux from a DVD on my Win8.1 Toshiba laptop it wouldn't work. Turns out I had to go into the settings and select BIOS instead of UEFI. Then it wouldn't boot off the internal drive until it was set back to to UEFI mode.

Just one more confounder to add.

-Tom

[David Buchhauser]

So I didn't expect to be posting this here but here I am. I had a brainstorm and thought I had a solution to it. Maybe I still do. I was planning to pick up a second computer to do the programming for the CNC Router on. Then it occurred to me that why not use my old laptop? So to give a little background info the CNC computer is a desktop with WinCNC on it and also VCarve Pro. IT has a USB hard drive it runs off of. So I thought I would remove the hard drive from the laptop and run off the extenal USB hard drive. It seemed like a good idea. However with the laptop hard drive removed and the external hd plugged in it won't recognize it. I go into the bios and deselect everything but the USB ports. Nothing! However it's not just the old laptop. My current laptop doesn't see it either. I can go into file explorer where you normally will show every type of storage including removable storage and it's not visible. Why? It works fine on the desktop that is attached to the CNC. So I know the hard drive isn't the problem. I can plug it into any of the USB ports on the desktop and it automatically accesses it. I don't even get a power light when plugged into either of the laptops. I'm puzzled to say the least.

Hi Ronald,

I think you would be better off to get a second desktop pc instead of the laptop (might be cheaper for a decent used/reconditioned one). Then install a second seat of VCarve Pro onto this new computer. I believe that Vectric allows at least 3 seats at no additional cost. I have it installed on 4 separate desktop computers. However, I would think that VCarve Pro would run fine on a suitable laptop. In either case, it will need to be installed onto the C Drive (boot drive) in order to work properly. I believe that WINCNC is intended to control your cnc machine, and does not have any "design" capabilities.

The WinCNC site states: "WinCNC is software and hardware package that allows control of a CNC machine using a Windows PC. The hardware consists of a PCI card and daughter board which are installed inside of the PC. Both items are required to run WinCNC"

You certainly can do your design work, create tool paths, and generate the required gcode for your cnc router from the comfort of your home (as opposed to garage) using either a laptop or desktop pc. Then use a USB "thumb drive" to transfer your files to the shop computer. That is what I do most of the time. I usually don't do the post processing (gcode creation) in the office as I usually end up making some changes (feeds, speeds, etc.) once I am at the cnc machine. So it is very nice to have the design software on both computers.

David

https://www.vectric.com/support/system-requirements

VCarve Pro hardware requirements.jpg

[Curt Harms]

Just to throw more mud into this when I tried to boot Linux from a DVD on my Win8.1 Toshiba laptop it wouldn't work. Turns out I had to go into the settings and select BIOS instead of UEFI. Then it wouldn't boot off the internal drive until it was set back to to UEFI mode.

Just one more confounder to add.

-Tom

Which linux distro? Ubuntu & Mint should boot fine in UEFI mode, unless the manufacturer's UEFI implementation is nonstandard - HP is notorious here. I haven't tried booting from a DVD in years, USB is SO much faster.

[Lee DeRaud]

Which linux distro? Ubuntu & Mint should boot fine in UEFI mode, unless the manufacturer's UEFI implementation is nonstandard - HP is notorious here. I haven't tried booting from a DVD in years, USB is SO much faster.

Doesn't really depend on the distro, it has to do with which of the dozen or so "live USB/DVD" utilities was used to set up the boot sector. But at this point I'd expect most of them have a UEFI option anyway.

[Tom Stenzel]

Doesn't really depend on the distro, it has to do with which of the dozen or so "live USB/DVD" utilities was used to set up the boot sector. But at this point I'd expect most of them have a UEFI option anyway.

I think I used Ubuntu.

Later I did try to make a thumbdrive UEFI bootable with utilities that were supposed to work. The result would stop with an error. The reason I was making the bootable DVD was in case I needed to do some data recovery if Win 8.1 went belly up.

The reason I brought it up was if Ronald (remember him? He started it! It's all his fault! ) was trying to put a pre UEFI version of Windows on a newer laptop that had UEFI enabled. I'm not sure how that would work.

-Tom